TMH 05, 065

~2400 BCE·Early Dynastic·P020479

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How to Read Cuneiform: What 102,246 Tablets Actually Say

This tablet is one of the primary sources examined in that investigation.

About this tablet

This is one of the oldest mathematical problem texts known, written at Nippur in southern Iraq around 2500 BCE. A scribe sets a geometry exercise: a rectangular field is 67½ rods long and must have an area of exactly 1 iku (100 sar); how wide must it be? The answer given—1 rod, 5 cubits, 2 spans, 3⅓ fingers—is arithmetically exact, showing that Early Dynastic scribes could already divide area by length using a multi-level system of length units. The final word may be the name of the student or teacher, Il-il.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

A field is 67½ rods long. Its width is to be such that the field covers exactly one iku. The width works out to 1 rod, 5 cubits, 2 spans and 3⅓ fingers. Signed (or attributed to): Il-il. A worked school problem in field measurement.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

High confidence

67½ nindan, the long side (length), the short side (width): (so that the area is) 1 iku of field. (Result:) 1 nindan, 5 cubits, 2 šu-du-a (spans), 3 fingers and ⅓ finger. Il-il (?).

Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

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Transliteration

1(gesz2@c)# 7(asz@c) 1/2(asz@c) us2 nindax(DU)
sag 1(iku@c) GAN2
1(asz@c) nindax(DU) 5(disz@t) kusz3 2(disz@t) szu-du3-a# 3(disz@t) szu-si 1/3(asz@c) szu-si
il il

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 065. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Hilprecht Collection, University of Jena, Germany (P020479) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

Related tablets

Related sources

~1800 BCE

Plimpton 322

Whatever its purpose, this single tablet shows that Babylonian mathematicians, working in base-60, had an arithmetic understanding of right triangles a millennium before Pythagoras was born.